Overview
Irritating things and useful tips that you would better know before actually playing through the game.
Prefix
Official art for Thief Deadly Shadows
Before starting I want to mention that all my guide is based on a default version of the game with basic Sneaky Upgrade + Thief 3 Gold + Improved Fonts + Briefing Videos improvements installed. Maybe there are some extreme patches out there that fix these issues and rewrite the game code – I don’t know. This guide is based on Thief version I played myself and which most of other players will use.
The idea for this guide came to me after replaying Thief: Deadly Shadows recently. Though I always loved original Thief trilogy, because of its age and genre pioneering there are several things that will irritate you throughout the game and some which you wish you knew from the start. Thus, I decided to highlight them all for those, who are only starting to dive into the wonderful world of Thief. Nevertheless, if you are a person who likes to fully explore the game by themselves without any info beforehand then this guide might actually spoil your experience, but if you are like that, then what you are doing here in the first place?
To begin with, I have similar guides for both The Dark Project and The Metal Age, which you may find useful, if you are only considering to start the trilogy. It is not mandatory to read them for understating this particular guide, but they can give you a better understanding on how the series evolved over the years. Here I will not talk about installing patches and fixes, there are many other guides dedicated to it and essentially everything you need to comfortably play Deadly Shadows today is basic Sneaky Upgrade and EAX Sound Fix. However, I would also highly recommend installing: Thief 3 Gold, Briefing Videos and Improved Fonts. The first one makes missions one big levels, instead of small locations linked by loading screens, the second one adds fan-made briefings in style of original two games, instead of simple text boxes, and the last one adds higher resolution texts and fixes its position in several places. Though all these are not must-have, they make gameplay much smoother and convenient, and I really recommend using them, even if you generally disregard installing any additional mods.
Game’s Performance
Official art for Thief Deadly Shadows
First things first, though fans made a huge job on fixing Thief 3, its engine is so “majestic” that it still has several major performance problems on modern systems and very unwilling to work with other programs. First of all, the game is completely resistant to minimization: once you minimize it or choose another active window, it instantly freezes and requires process killing and restarting to play again, so be sure not to switch to another window while playing. Secondly, the game doesn’t support Steam overlay, so you can’t use even browser while playing Deadly Shadows. Last but not least, trying to stream this game is a nightmare: every time you start capturing game with OBS the fps drops to nearly zero and I didn’t find any way to fix that, except using window mode in small resolution, so good luck if you were planning to stream your walkthrough. But even if you don’t need either of the functions above and you just want to enjoy the game, it still crashes every 2-3 hours, so be ready to that and save regularly.
Difficulties
Original Thief was famous for its innovative difficulty system: it changed not AI but number of objectives and levels layout. Here it was changed in order to bring more players to the game and now enemy intelligence depends on the difficulty. But that’s not a problem, because good old fans can always go expert with smart enemies, yes?.. Well, yeah, except… Now, expert doesn’t give any new objectives or unlock any new places, it even doesn’t restrict you from killing guards! But now you never can leave without collecting 90% of loot and 3 “special items” on the level. And though because of cramped locations you are unlikely to skip most of the loot, one potentially skipped chest or even a valuable trinket can result in you running around the location looking for it. Add up that some levels are too linear and loot is not easily distinguishable (more on that later) and you will get a frustrating experience sometimes. But what’s even more fun is that because of this restriction one semi-crucial moment in one of the mission breaks and though it’s fixed in Thief 3 Gold patch, it still shows the drawback of that whole idea.
Settings And Controls
Because the game was heavily targeted on original Xbox it obviously supports a gamepad and whole adjusting process is described in this guide. As for the keyboard, we finally got a good layout by default, which you can adjust for yourself quite easily, but for some reason they completely removed mouse sensitivity setting. And I could now start describing how to modify the configuration file, except thanks to the fans, this setting can be adjusted via special Sneaky Tweaker utility, which is located in Thief Deadly ShadowsSystem folder. Just open it and go to Sneaky Upgrade – Tweaks – Mouse Sensitivity and adjust it to your preference.
Sneaker Tweaker itself has a lot of parameters from FOV to gravity and lets you customize many little things. I won’t describe all the functions – the utility itself has good explanations on each and I recommend looking through them before starting the game. However, I will highlight those tweaks, which, at least in my opinion, make the experience better.
Sneaky Upgrade – Tweaks:
Intro movies – Off
No third-person death – On
Classic Speed – On (more on that in the next section)
No junk item flashing – On
Sneaky Upgrade – Screenshots:
Take screenshot with PrintScreen – On
Quality of screenshot with PrintScreen – 100
If you installed Thief 3 Gold, Briefing Videos, Improved Fonts (that’s good):
Widow Moira fix – Yes
Enhanced Enforcers – Telepathy (this one is questionable though, but, in short, if you want the game to be more logical and challenging – choose Telepathy, if you want to see and laugh on how it is in release version – choose Standard)
Everything else is either by default or your preference.
Movement And Parkour
Official art for Thief Deadly Shadows
So, after spending some time on adjusting, you start the game and notice that movement changed quite a lot since the second title. Developers for some reason decided to add 3rd person view, which you actually will hardly ever use, and because of this Garrett had to have proper animations, that could be observed. And that causes slight troubles and “delays” in controls because game has to play animations properly, so the third person will look fine. And you might think that’s ok until you actually start to play the game.
First of all, now there is no deep moving system with several speeds and respective level of noise, now you either make a bit or a lot of sound or doesn’t make it at all. The first case is walking and running and second is while crouching or holding creep button. This harms original gameplay quite a lot because now there is no need to watch what floor you are standing on and keep to the quiet surfaces. You also will barely use moss arrows – only 1-2 times when you will have to jump from high ledge quietly. Also because of this sound change the default move now is running instead of walking, which I personally don’t like and thankfully there is a way to change it in the Sneaky Tweaker. However, because while crouching you will now constantly run, just because it’s faster and doesn’t do sound, you might wanna keep it default (and I think because of that that moveset change was made). But the funny thing is that default switch of running to walking is nearly useless because you can hold creep button while running, which has approximately the same speed as walking but produce now sound. So, in the end, it’s up to you to decide what option to use, but I would personally prefer default walking to hear Garrett’s footsteps and give myself at least a bit of challenge.
In addition to it, if you played a lot of original Thief you are used to do straferunning because it is always faster thanks to the game’s engine. Here, it was fixed, but for some reason (probably because of animations) straferunning speed is not the same as running speed but actually lower, so you will have to relearn and get used to press just running, which can be difficult, if you just finished first two games.
Moreover, leaning now is very slow, exposes you and moves Garret’s model slightly, so if you are standing on the edge of something, trying to peek from a corner, you can easily fall down. Moreover, now it also quite significantly exposes you, because Garret moves not only his head but body out of the corner. Yeah, in the original leaning also was not an invisible move, but there it was fast and affected your exposure slightly, while here it’s directly opposite. So in the end of the day, it always easier to step out and step in from the corner quickly, rather than waiting for the animations to play. In addition, they removed leaning forward, which was useful for both blackjacking and stealing, giving you additional safe distance. Here you sometimes have to nearly hug the guards from behind just to knock or pickpocket them.
However, instead all of the above we now have a possibility to flatten against a wall, so even close-bypassing guards won’t notice you as long as you are in the shadow. And yeah, it’s a useful mechanic but why developers decided to make a separate move and button for it, why not just make it a pure mechanic like original games did? Probably because of animations, which had to look nicely in third person but the thing is that it will hardly be used because of small size and narrowness of the locations, which make third person just inconvenient to use.
And now we made out way to the parkour, which is just broken. Yes, in the originals it also was far from perfect, but most of the bugs occurred in places where you were not really supposed to be and with the time you got used to general clumsiness. Here, you will always have guess whether you can climb something or not, again, because of animations. Even if you keep jump button pressed whole time the game can just fail in animations placement and you will be constantly climbing without reaching the top. Walking on beams and other narrow objects is now a pain, because neither Garrett’s legs are placed on it, which is essential for animations, so the game decides you are in free fall and you start sliding from the beam. Even simple jumping to the ledge can now fail because now it can be to high for legs to stand and to low for hands to catch, so you will just smash into the ground hugging the wall. But the icing on the cake is a known falling bug, when because of a failed climb, falling animation starts while you are standing on the ground. You become such state, with constant running speed, producing now sound and unability to perform most of the moves. There are three ways to fix it: load a save (even with this state), fall from something and finish the animation, or, the most simple, take out bow and start pulling the bowstring. The only good thing is that now you can control your horizontal speed while falling, which gives a bit more control over character in the air, and especially helps in using ladders, because if you need to climb down and you just “walk into” its top you instantly have animation of climbing up back to the platform, so you have to fall down some way and catch the ladder somewhere in the middle.
Last but not least, now instead of rope arrows we have climbing gloves, which give you ability to climb stone and brick walls. And not that they are bad, though initially they seem to be a pathetic attempt to bring at least some vertical gameplay back, but the mechanic is performed quite strangely. Garrett can climb a nearly smooth brick wall but cannot hang onto a 10 cm ledge and climb any ledge with less that a meter of free space from the wall. So, keep that in mind when you will decide to use them. Oh, and because of animations Garrett now forgot how to swim and jumping into the water results in instant death, and the question is why didn’t developers just block direct access to the water, instead of making such a stupid and unintuitive mechanic.
Loot And Junk
Art by Alexandru Negoiță[www.artstation.com]
The loot mechanic suffered quite a lot too and not only because of the difficulty requirements. In the original games, you could always distinguish valuables from junk just by looking at the item and here both of these tend to have the same textures. The only thing that divides them is that valuables have small glitter effect around the model, which you might not notice from a distance or sometimes even close. This is especially problematic with paintings and books, which have this effect only in a corner and apart from valuable versions, there a lot of junk ones around the levels.
Another major issue is loot targeting: for some reason it can stay non targeted even if you directly look at it and you have to move camera around to “catch” it, which requires precious time if you are in a tight situation. But the bigger problem is Garrett’s strange affection to junk: for some reason if there is a valuable and a junk next to each other he prefers to target the latter one and taking a junk is one the biggest mistakes you can make in this game. Why? Well, because for some reason Garrett cannot put it back on the surface that you look at, you always have to have a lot of free space around you. And even if you do, he can’t just place item quietly on the floor, it always spawns somewhere in the air and crashes into the ground with a loud noise, even it fell on the carpet, which even Garrett can quietly jump and run on. So, collecting a junk item usually results in simple load because it’s both faster and safer than trying to find some far corner to drop the item.
Lighting System
Art by Kaytara[www.deviantart.com]
Because of new engine and technologies, we finally have a fully working dynamic lights system and it performs really well. There are no real issues with this and light gem mostly shows the appropriate level of dynamic light falling on you. There are even some sections that are based on changing lighting, which a really cool to go through. However, because of the limitations not all the light in game is dynamic and levels always have some sections with manually placed lightmaps, where most of the old problems return: actual light level doesn’t correspond with the gem or it shows different light levels in two equally lit places.
The tactics are mostly the same to the old games: crouching exposes you less and moving slowly is preferable in half shadows. However, now to be fully hidden near the wall you need to flatten against it, not just stand near. Also, in old games Garrett’s exposure was determined by how much light falls on the point he stands, but now it depends on the amount of light hitting Garrett’s model. Not that it changes anything significantly, but just keep in mind not to expose your parts to the light sources while standing around the corner.
Enemy AI And Awareness
Art by Tervola[www.deviantart.com]
AI has improved quite significantly since the second title and if it was not for the harmed sound design, I would actually consider guards’ AI on expert level the best in the series. But, though the sound quality improved over the years, the design degraded: in addition to completely silent crouching Garrett, enemies sounds and steps became quieter and less distinguishable. In original, even from behind the door you could perfectly understand the direction enemy was in, and whether they was going to or from you. Here, you barely hear steps of a guard several meters from you, let alone behind closed doors or in nearby rooms. Because of cramped locations you of course don’t really notice and struggle from that, but it’s still a pity that one of the most deep and brilliant Thief mechanic was simplified so much. In addition to it, helmet guards were also removed as well as female ones, which also harms the enemy diversity in comparison to the second title.
Nevertheless, other changes are quite positive. First of all, now enemies have not 3 but 4 alert levels: 0 – usual patrolling, 1 – guard saw a glimpseheard slight sound of you, 2 – guard saw some amountheard a medium sound of you, 3 – guard saw a good amountheard a loud sound of you, 4 – guard clearly sees and attacks you. At the level 1 they now not just mumble about seeing something to themselves but actually stop at their place and wait if there will be more disturbance. As for the 2 and 3 levels, at both of them guard will investigate the trouble place but at the level 2 it will be a casual check with returning to patrol after, while at level 3 it will be a search for you with the weapon drawn. They will now also more actively react to the opened doors and chests, though still won’t really care about door noises and will be totally indifferent to lockpicking and arrow sound (except fire and noise types).
In addition to new alert states, some guards now will carry torches, which makes them moving light sources and a bigger threat than usual patrols. Some levels also have cats walking around, which sounds will bring the guard if you decided to run in front of them.
Also a couple of words about factions. Now you can ally with Pagans and Hammerites by doing collective-like jobs for them and one actual side quest. With good relations they won’t attack you and with great relations they will actually let you visit their bases and take some equipment (but not loot). It’s quite easy to ally with both of them in short amount of time, but if you want to get bonuses by the end of the game for 100% completion of their jobs I recommend you to start doing both of them with a list on the official wiki, so you won’t miss anything.
Gear Usage
Official art for Thief Deadly Shadows
No, I will not go through all the gear and how to use it, but instead highlight certain special moments, which came in the game with the change of the engine. Firstly, one of the most annoying change is that now to backstab or knock out an enemy you must stand directly behind them and wait until Garrett rises the weapon to perform the attack. Not only that it causes problems with enemies standing near walls but with the lack of forward leaning completely destroys the tactic of knocking out an approaching enemy in the dark corridor. Some items like gas mines or speed potions were also removed, instead we got Oil Flasks, which act both like a way to knock out or distract enemy. The mechanic of holy water was also changed: now you have to throw bottles with it instead of having holy water arrows for 30 seconds. The good things though are that now keys are applied automatically and you don’t have to manually cycle through them. The exploit with flash bombing and then knocking out packs of enemies was also fixed, though now enemy instantly recovers from the flash if you hit them. However, now there is another cheaty strategy and its gas bombs: they appear quite early in the game, in comparison to gas arrows and their price is quite cheap, so you just collect a pack of enemies behind you and knock out all of them with a gas bomb.
As for the bow, as I already said, rope arrows were completely removed and replaced with mediocre climbing gloves. However, there is also another issue: in original you could always cancel the attack by just switching to different weapon but here it doesn’t work and initially you might think there is no such button, but they actually moved it to Esc for some reason and there is no way to change it. As for the bow itself, arrows became much faster and now can fly significant amount of distance, so now you don’t really have to aim properly and calculate how much gravity will affect the shot.
Selling And Shopping
Now instead of one big shop before mission and instant loot sell after mission, you have several small shops and fences around the city, each of which trades certain equipment and buys certain items. I won’t go through all of them, but just note that you better remember, which stores have crucial supplies, so you won’t have to run around the city looking for them. In addition, you can get some moss and water arrows around the city, which crystals regenerate every day in certain places, and you might save some coin by collecting them. However, it’s not really that important, because there are tons of loot around The City and on missions, so you will always have more than enough money to equip everything to the max.
Apart from usual equipment, the only things that you can occasionally buy are training locks, which are mostly useless, climbing gloves upgrade and exhibit replicas for one of the last missions, so there is no real reason to save money up for something. And, as I said before, even if you don’t save them and buy out all the stuff you still have quite a lot left.
Saving And Loading
In the original game the saving was quick and simple, you also had a lot of slots with level names and amount of time into them, so you could easily load the needed save. Here, they for some reason decided to make save icons huge and moreover write save date and time instead of time into the level. And it’s very inconvenient now to have several saves at the time. In addition to it, with every load the game restarts, so instead of 1-2 seconds like in the original, general loading takes about 5-6 seconds, which is a significant time, especially when you just finished older games.
So, even though I recommended to use usual saves and save in 2-3 slots in the original, here I recommend using quicksave and quickload, which are much faster. The levels here are not that big and most of them can be completed under an hour and there are no tough moments, which can cause softlock. Just don’t accidently save instead of loading, when you suddenly get spotted by the guards.
Walkthroughs
Official art for Thief Deadly Shadows
In comparison to the first two games there is no really good text walkthrough for the third title, though here it’s probably one of the most needed one because of the loot requirements on expert. And though you can try to find your own playthrough on Youtube, I recommend using JohnnyDFox Thief Deadly Shadows playlist for this. It has separate videos for all levelslocations completed on expert by stealth with 100% loot collected.
And though it’s usually for you to decided whether to use a walkthrough or not, with this game I really recommend you checking playthroughs for The Sunken Citadel and Killing Time (The Clocktower) before actually going through the levels to prevent running around and a potential restart. The first one has easily missable crucial loot and the second one is very linear and hard to backtrack, which causes a lot of problems with meeting expert loot requirements.
Translation And Subtitles
Official cover for the European release of the game
Original games had official translations for French and German with both text and voiceover, however Thief 3 officially supports only text translations to German, French and Italian, and the language can be changed while installing Sneaky Upgrade. As for other languages, there are likely some fan-made translations like for the first two games – browse google and ttlg.com for that. But as for voice overs, because there are even no official voices for other languages, I doubt there are any for others, except maybe some really fan-made ones, which are most likely to be worse than original voice over.
And, finally, with subtitles it’s now as easy as it can be. Just turn them on in the game settings and that’s all. However, they still take a bunch of space on screen and hurt the default interface of the game, so if you know English well, I recommend turning them off and just listen to the voices speaking. Also if for some reason you installed different official language but subtitles are still in English, this guide should help you.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading this guide. It turned out to be quite chaotic and unstructured at some places, pretty much like the game itself, but I hope it was still useful to you. You can also suggest your own tips in the comments or correct me on some of the mentioned one, if you are a more experienced Thief player. And though it’s obvious, I want to clarify one more time that I DO NOT OWN ANY RIGHTS on the drawn images used in the guide and all regards go to their original authors. I used them to bring more people to original trilogy fan arts, which are now quite difficult to find, because google usually give you tons of arts on the mediocre remake with few on the real series. Nevertheless, I didn’t manage to find proper links for some of the fan artists, so you can send them in the comments, or if you are an actual author you can also leave your own comment with proper links – you guys rock!
Thanks for reading, and enjoy playing the final chapter of the Thief story
Art by Alexandru Negoiță[www.artstation.com]
